Kelly vs Pilar pt 1

Kelly is a bitch.

She sits all day in front of her computer, endlessly reading internet diaries, working on internet crosswords, checking her email and telling stories to her co-workers.

Then she has the nerve to complain about how stifled she feels with her life right now, how ungratified she is, how she needs some sat-is-fac-tion (sung to the tune of Rolling Stones), how she needs to write more, how she needs to publish, how she needs sex, how she needs intelligent conversation, how crazy her family is, how needy her son is, how lonely her bed is.

And yet, day in and day out, she's basking in the electrode light of an EPA gateway, pointing and clicking and keying and generally allowing her brain to evaporate.

Now Pilar. She's a handful. When she's in control, nothing bad can happen. She writes about Strawberry and Nita and Chalo and Marise and Reetha and Gary and Lila and Rosa and Dixie and she sometimes takes a fresh white sheet of unlined paper from the printer and hacks out html for a website she will eventually post.

Pilar has undying commentary circling in her mind, she is constantly seeing past the shrouds of social construction and cultural myth, coming up with beautiful and majestic mountains of theory and logic. Sometimes she pulls out a book (this week's: Two Girls. Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill) and scribbles little notes in green ink along the margins, underlining passages significant to her concious development, significant to her burning desire to get behind the appearance of things.

Pilar is the one who uses NPR as her spring board, who wishes Kelly would go ahead and purchase the mini-recorder so that when Pilar emerged, her thoughts would be there for Kelly to transcribe. Beautiful and poignant lines of prose. A stanza to attach to the countless other lines of poetry Pilar has strung together.

Pilar has an astounding sense of entitlement. She knows that she deserves what she has and what she will eventually get. Kelly, on the other hand, second guesses herself, immerses herself in tv programs like Murder in Small Town X to avoid having to face her own stupidity and her fears of failure.

One day, Pilar will take over. Or, she will fade away, leaving only a brittle and leathered Kelly in her wake. A Kelly who can't decide if getting out of bed is worth the bother, a Kelly who knows no reason to breathe.

Missing someone? That would be Jezebel. She's a whole other story, but one day, she'll change the world.